400W Small Wind Turbine [Giveaway]

To be considered for this random giveaway, leave a comment below through the end of Thursday, May 6, 2010.*

After writing about Sam's Club's installation of 17 Skystream turbines in California, we were approached by the company with an opportunity to give away a 400W wind generator. We jumped at the chance given this could help out one of our readers. For informational purposes, the micro turbine is available for purchase online at Sam's Club, but at the end of this giveaway, one random commenter will be chosen to receive one for free.

Keep in mind that the generator doesn't come with a tower kit and will need to be set up, but it has a value of $596.00 and will get you well on your way toward generating on-site electricity. Here are the specs:

Carbon fiber composite blades for low wind noise;

Lightweight cast aluminum body;

Easy installation;

Weatherproof;

Great for 12V battery charging, remote power, and backup power;

Fully integrated regulator automatically shuts down when batteries are charged to minimize wear; and

*To participate in this giveaway contest, leave a comment here by midnight MST on Thursday, May 6, 2010. One comment per person; use a valid email; available only in the United States. By leaving a comment, you agree to the terms and conditions relating to giveaways on Jetson Green.

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385 Comments

Very cool! I was surprised to see the story on Sams Club using wind power. I know Walmart has made in-roads to being more green but this caught me off guard.

I’ve been eyeballing wind power for a bit, my one issue has always been noise. I’ve seen a few of the smaller wind generators and all have been pretty “buzzy whirly” sounding (boat installations). This one looks really nice by spec and design.

Whoever wins needs to post up their experience here! I know I would be more than willing to share data and opinions.

I think micro turbines are incredibly interesting. The decreased cost would seem to allow multiple turbine configurations in various locations, which could be a huge advantage for areas traditionally not utilized for wind power.

Congrats to Sam’s. This is a great oportunity to show the public the alternative energy is available to all. I realy want a couple of these and some solar but still struggle with the cost. I hope I win!

Cool idea. I think more contests like this one could get more people who are on the fence for alternative energy to really see the potential out there. Hopefully, if I am chosen at random, others will take a look and want to know more, too.

Living here on the Colorado front range, where it is always windy, I’m always surprised there aren’t more wind tubines in use. A quiet, micro turbine like this might be just what is needed to get more people on board.

I’m not surprised by the move of Wal-Mart and Sams Club. They follow their customer very closely and make changes when market forces are at work. A good example is their move in to locally produced food and organics.

I’m not surprised by this move for Wal_Mart and Sam’s Club. They follow their customers very closely and work to provide products they want. For example, the strong move by Wal-Mart into locally produced food s and organic products. This wind turbine would go great at my home in the mountains.

This is a tiny house I’ve been slowly cobbling together that’s made mostly from shipping pallets. It measures only 7×12 feet but will have a kitchen, bath, living space, storage, and will sleep 3. The core concept I’m exploring with the project is the true value of a house.

Shouldn’t the true value of a home be measured by the happiness and security it brings instead of its size and cost?

In the end the house will cost nothing but my effort. Any money spent on the house will be offset by selling free stuff I’ve been finding on craigslist.

This turbine would become the core to an off-grid power system that will power the house. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. 🙂

Heck yeah I’ll participate! I have a three year plan to build one of Jay Shafers Tumbleweed houses. I would love to power it with a wind turbine so sign me up! In the mean time I’m going to look into this product. Thanks!

Happy to see Sam’s Club selling HAWTs online. Very convenient and smart. I look forward to the day I walk into Sam’s Club and see one on display between the lawn mowers and gas grills. Hopefully that will convince the HOAs that this is the future and not an eyesore.

A wind turbine as a give-away? How AWESOME!!! I would love the chance to set it up in my town and begin changing the minds of the community leaders who are not totally convinced in the green/sustainable arena! Thanks for the opportunity to win one.

I have a small place in Washington and decided last year solar would not work because of my trees, I could top, and cut down some trees, but do not want to. So I have been looking at the wind turbine, this would be great for me, I am single and I bet I could live just fine with just this one turbine.
Good luck to everyone.
Jeff

This would be a great addition to my small Backyard Bungalows that I’m building. They are Green, super energy efficient, strong, made with SIPs and this could power the lighting, etc for them.
thanks
Gary

I am a student at Cascadia Community College in Bothell, WA. My area of studies is in Environmental Technology and Sustainable Practices. If I were awarded the wind turbine generator, I would donate it to my school’s program in ETSP. This would immensely enrich and enhance our program through having a live wind turbine which we could set up and study in our campus wetlands. The wetlands are jointly owned by the campus of Cascadia CC and UW – Bothell. By having an actual working and learning tool such as this, we could also develop whole courses study around this individual energy producing machine. Please consider me and the Cascadia Community College Environmental Technology and Sustainable Practices program for your random giveaway of the Wind Turbine Generator.

Sometimes urban, older multi-unit homes get left out of the wind and solar and retrofit opportunities, but my 60s era 4-plex apartment has a willing owner and is west facing. It is a perfect location for a small wind unit with it’s flat roof and territorial view which allows lots of wind and sun to hit the building. I’d love to run a laptop with a wireless connection on this unit. Thanks.

Windpower for small homes may not seem a huge overall effort to save on energy
but, no doubt in large numbers, they can go a long way towards helping. I’m sure those that use one are very happy indeed. I know I would like the opportunity.

It would be great to harness the wind here in Iowa and get to know first hand how well those little ones worked. That would have been a stimulus we could all enjoy….imagine how many of these could have been given to small home owners for the amount of what one of those corrupt banksters received.

Oh Wow! This is exciting. My husband & I have been talking about getting on e of these. We would definately share our experiences and would look forward to hearing from whoever wins. Last fall we completed a permaculture design certification course, are becoming better observers but taking it slow doing what we can to make changes; making better choices in caring for people, earth. We know we are still tipping the scales on the more consumption side but our goal is to equalize. It will be cause for celebration if we can bring our selves to tipping the scale, at least some days, towards redistributing the surplus.

I just specified a Skystream for a
US Fish and Wildlife project. Kept it on a monopole to reduce the danger to birds. Seems like the low(er) maintenance and easy hookup are great for a number of users.

I live on Jamaica Bay in Queens, NY. Lots of wind; I’ve been looking at many systems to switch from Con Ed to off-grid. House needs to be fixed, and I’m trying to make ends meet while being underemployed due to the economy. Wind turbine is a great way for me
to start.

I’d actually heard about Sams Club installing the turbines, but what I really think is the coolest is that they will actually be selling them. That will hopefully influence more folks to pick them up. Lord knows how many people shop at Sams. 🙂

This would be so useful at our house. We live on a bay that receives an incredible amount of wind; it’s one of the best windsurfing spots in the state of Washington. I’d love to see this wind put to good use (besides recreationally), and inspire the neighborhood to do the same!

As a “lady home builder”, women ask me all the time about when it will be possible to reduce the cost of heating, cooling, and other home needs b a device that will ‘fit in their backyard’. For this reason, I have considered offering mini turbines spotted through a subdivision that homeowners could ‘share’. I don’t know how many 2000 SF homes could be serviced in that manner – but I suspect that on a cost effective basis, homeowners might ‘share’ the energy reductions, but need to pay an additional amount to the service providers. There is also the question of ‘looks’. I always wonder why people complain about cell phone towers, etc – when they have been living with telephone and electrical poles for more than 100 years. I can understand not wanting to have a wind turbine SITE next to your back yard – since it takes a lot of anchoring space. I wonder, however, if there isn’t some alternative to this problem – the rotating cylinders, for example, that are wind turbines. Another alternative might be to make the anchoring space so ATTRACTIVE that it was considered a great area for family and kids to gather – landscaping, mixed use areas for baseball, soccer, picnics, etc. The immediate problem that comes to mind is the liablity factor of the tower failing and injuring someone. As the energy crunch starts effecting people as the current recession has done, I think there will be second thoughts: Do I want electricity or go back to kerosene laps and wood fires? There’s not a doubt what I’ll choose: I can’t live without hot water – and I’m not about to start heating it on a cast iron stove.

I’ve seen these before at work, the crew @ a Jean Michel Cousteau use one at one of their Environment centers, I though they would be too expensive for home owners but the price of these seem reasonable for a small residence to be able to use one.

This is great! I envy our local National Guard station for their having the capital to install a big old wind turbine and PV. We would install this on our undeveloped parcel outside of Taos, and use it to power a pump for a well.

I plan to retire from my aerospace job soon and retire to the east Texas woods and build a net ZEH. This small turbine would make part of a great demonstration of what can be done to minimize our footprint on this planet.

We are building a house built around self-sustainability. Our house is rain collection, well water, propane and (hopefully!) solar and wind if we can scrape the money together, even though we are struggling.

I had no idea Sam’s Club sold wind power. Love the blog. Keep up the good work.

would be fun to put up in my yard, the guy next door put up a homemade one lasted about a week ,(blades where not balanced ) we get good wind at night .here in the city, i live in Valley Center , Kansas. town is in the bottom of the Valley , hope I win lol

Here in Ohio, there is a real push to get 300MW of our energy grid off of sustainable energy. Instead of blanketing our farm land with solar panels and/or wind mills, these small mills are just the thing. The solar panel needs could be easily addressed by using the flat roofs of warehouses and factories…why till up our farm land!

Very intriguing, my fellow graduate students and I at the USC School of Engineering would love to have the opportunity to gather some data on the unit with respect to site selection at our satellite research centers. Hope I win! Keep up the great work…

We are building an Eco Adventure Lodge and this would fit very nicely into the scheme of things. Thanks for the chance to win the wind generator. We can all win with windpower if we but spread our wings of imagination and power up our minds with possibility.

I have a small hobby farm (more like a livestock animal refuge) 18 miles from my house, totally off grid. I just recently had a small cabin shell put up and am planning on finishing it within the next two months. This wind turbine is a fantastic alternative for electric power for my farm! Presently, we have to run a generator when we need power, but don’t care for the noise or having to use gasoline, so this would be a fantastic addition! We take in unwanted livestock from the Rutherford Co shelter and needed a place to sleep and hang out to spend more time with the critters. Not having power is a real problem, and even if I don’t win, I’m going to look into this product here in middle Tennessee!

Great idea for getting people to look at wind-power. I hope whoever wins will send word of how they use it. I’d love to know if it would be practical in a city, or what’s involved beyond the turbine itself.

Yes. I am subscribed to the comments via e-mail – I like to know when people respond to my comments. I’m not complaining about your site… more a feature in Disqus. I would like to be able to unsubscribe to posts from time to time while still getting the updates on all my other sites. Disqus doesn’t have that feature at this time 🙁

hello,
My name is Oona…like charlie Chaplin’s wife. I am Basque, French American and married to a Senegalese fisherman. We are directors of a non-for-profit ecological cultural arts exchange camp based in the north of Senegal near Saint Louis (where there is a lot of wind btw!) We are in the process of building the first sustainable camp in Senegal where the traditional african life style is mixed with ultra modern eco-architecture in order to show the african governments that THIS IS WHAT THEY SHOULD INVEST IN!!! Africa is still bare and full of open land that is ripe to build new green cities based on their traditions (using adobe, wells for water and solar panels OR little wind mills!!) Senegal has 700 km of coastline with loads of wind each day yet there are no wind mills. I think this would be a great opportunity to show the government that there are people ready to modernize Senegal as long as the government participates in funding sustainable and ecological development.
I think my association would be a perfect place for your windmill because we are very small and local, I am fully integrated into the Senegalese population through my husband and child and this wouldn’t be just a private wind mill….people would come to see it from all over the country and I think it will inspire a lot of businesses who might see an economic opportunity in investing in wind power!
Thanks for your time. I hope to be in touch soon!
Oona Ibar

this is a great little turbine, with enough power to really make a difference in our energy consumption. we’re stuck with a small home on property that is ideal for wind generation, but without the money to take advantage. this little guy would be a great start, good luck to all- GO GREEN!

This is great! We are a small canine rescue group on a ranch in Waller, Texas. We are trying to do a green remodel on one of the “outbuildings” for a permanent shelter for volunteers. Our resources are limited (funds generally go toward care and feeding of the dogs),but we are actually talking about trying to build our own solar panels. We had not not considered wind power because of the expense. This would be God send for us!

Looks great. This would be wonderful for the very small home I am building as my first home in Maine. The foot print will be less than 500 sq. feet and as environmentally friendly as possible. I plan to start a blog about the process this spring.

This is great! We’ve been researching alternative energy sources, but were unaware that Sam’s Club is offering something like this. We would love to be off-grid on our ten rural acres, but even backup generation would be a big plus. Thanks for letting us know about this, and offering this give-away!

This is such a fabulous offer. I would love to win the turbine as we are looking to build a tiny house and had not decided how we were going to power the lights and computers.
Thank you again for making such a generous offer to your readers!

I just purchased my first home in Pittsburgh, Pa. “The Nunnery Hill Overlook Homes are ENERGY STAR rated Homes conveniently perched above Pittsburgh’s Northside and walking distance from Downtown and the North Shore attractions. Featuring almost 2000 sq. ft of bright, energy efficient, open floorplan living, and spectacular city views.” I think this wind turbine would be a great feature to my new urban home and would set an example for the rest of the city.

A perfect solution to my problem. Six years ago, I purchased a small piece of land that rest on a high ridge in southern Indiana, planning to build a small cabin. Because of the location and the contour of the land, getting eletric power is just more then I can afford. Not wanting to listen to the sound of portable generators, my project is at a stand still. This small affordable wind turbine like this could just be the ticket. Thanks, keep the info.flowing.

GREAT idea ! Viral marketing with a real benefit for the reader that will keep ongiving benefits for years to come. Well done folks. I’m planning to put a DonQi turbine in my
back garden (2kw but could always use a little brother for it.
We want more of this sort of thing.
Free LED lightbubs anyone?

Hey Preston! I LOVE these things, my neighbor has one and it looks really beautiful out in the country. They’ve put it on a pole but designed a faux tower around it, looks very old-school and fits right into the landscape. I would really like to get one for my homestead, it would totally power my small off-grid cabin!

UrbanRancher, I’m excited to announce that today is your lucky day. You are the random winner of this small turbine giveaway! Congrats. I’ll email you separately to get your address and information for shipment. Thanks to everyone for entering.

Thanks for providing this opportunity. I have recently learned of your blog & have enjoyed reading some of your posts, especially the 10 Green Office Bldg Trends!
I was really surprised to see that Sams Club offers these wind turbines! So hopefully there is a ‘fortunate’ wind blowing in my direction!

I live in coastal Virginia in an area that is rated “excellent” for wind power.
Everyone who knows me has heard me say that I wish I had a wind generator
so I could harness the near constant breezes here. I’d LOVE to finally be able to
do just that. Great Giveaway!

Great stuff. Thanks for passing this on!
For what it’s worth, my wife and I are putting our hearts and souls into building a 750 acre self-sufficient community in Tennessee. I’ve been working on putting in a micro-hydroelectric generator on our seasonal 50′ waterfall. The next project I have lined up is a wind generator.

I offer a 10% rebate on the purchase of land here for those who put in renewable energy or rain water collection system. So, although I don’t have a following like you do, I think placement in the Village might offer some marketing synergy for Sam’s.

So far, we’ve sold 14 lots (more in the pipeline) and all buyers want to live sustainably off-grid. This would be a great opportunity to prove the viability of wind here on the Cumberland Plateau and sell some more systems once a prototype is in place.

We need to see more Wind Turbines put into use. This is really a renewable energy source that has been neglected in the US. I can remember as a kid traveling across the great plains and seeing all the windmills in use. Now they are almost all gone. We need to go back to using this wonderful source of power. It is great to see Sams Club offering these Turbines for sale. Great give away that will help produce power for the lucky winner.

A great prize at a great time for those of us who wish to experiment with alternative energy for our homes. I hope the winner will be able to communicate regularly on his or her success and failures with the installation, use and maintenance of the turbine. My only regret is that I live in Canada. Better luck next time I guess. Hope to read more about the winner’s experience with the product.

I have often wondered ho hard would it be to modify all the lights in every parking lot to accommodate a wind generator and/or a solar panel to offset the lights in the thousands of parking lots across the world at Walmart.

Very cool. I was as member of a green building competition team for my school and it’s quite astonishing how efficient wind energy is. Also, driving back from school I pass a whole farm of turbines. They’re actually quite cool to see in person.

Too bad more people wouldn’t take the plunge into greener power generation. It is refreshing to see that a few corporations are taking steps forward to lessen their carbon footprints.
As one preparing to live off the grid on the old family homestead, I would gladly welecom a ‘windfall’…..sorry, I couldn’t resist it!

Not only is this a fun prize, its actually a great turbine… one of the quietest, efficient and affordable turbines on the market! I researched all the manufacturers, the Skystream came out on top for my application… it was was even approved by the Golden Gate Audubon Society. Thanks Southwest Wind!

what a wonderful opportunity to own a wind mill. I live in the San Luis Valley where the wind blows strong and this windmill would make a great example for our solar garden community we have been working on here in the valley. We are excited about helping our community to go green through solar gardens where we sell shares of our solar to those next door and in the community who can not put up panels. Wind is such a great addition to solar here and this size windmill would be great for so many families living here with no electricity at all.

What a great opportunity. Nice to know as well that they are so inexpensive although I live in Texas so solar power is really the way to go i would still make use of this for my “urban cabin” 600 sq feet in the city.

We are senior citizens on a fixed income and we live in Northwest Ohio. I feel like I am living in West Texas. The wind here is terrific and I have a great desire to have a windmill. Not only to save money on electric bills but to help the environment and save the earth for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and all future generations.

Wow! finally a wind turbine that fits in a backyard. Very Cool. I live in the very Windy Columbia River Gorge of rural ORegon am all about green energy and even like the new giant wind turbines that are popping up in my area better than the transmission towers we have had for generations. This is one of the great new ideas in America.!

A small wind turbine would really work well in Montana where we have allot of BIG, PREMIUM GRADE WIND! This “new” energy source has been around since the BIG SKY COUNTRY was formed but it remains an untapped resource for most private citizens. Harnessing the Montana wind and developing the power grid to share this source with other states is a #1 priority. Starting small with a 400 watt turbine would set a good example for others in the area.

I am planning a small home using a shipping container, from ECOPOD. I plan to be totally off the grid with your wind turbine. Beautiful industrial design, I want several to make a sculptural installation that powers my home. Do they come in Orange?
Bleyer
space+OBjECKTS

Winning this would be the first step after recovery and coming out from the big “C” and building a sustainable home after over five years of spiritual retreat to overcome this illness using only natural means and self shaman healing. (The doctor said I would live only six months if I didn’t listen to his Western Medicine ideas.) Hopefully, thereafter I could become a peer advocate using the home as a meeting place.

I am doing my homework, studying, and planning to be the first,as far as I can tell,to build a totally awesome and stylish small modern green home in Akron Ohio. It is going to be constructed as much as possible out of salvaged and reclaimed material AND power self sufficient. A Skystream would be icing on the cake!

just saw this great system today,would be great to bring it to my country Bhutan, since it is mountainous and reaching electricity to these remote places is always expensive, would be a great way of showing alternative power sources to my fellow country men and the government.would be nice to have one. cross my finger and pray to god.

I have never seen so many responses to anything you all have put up!! It’s a hit!! Maybe someone else will give something green and energy producing (or saving) away!! Cash for Caulkers just may be a hit as well!